Twenty years later. why did Martha Stewart go to prison, exactly? ‘Martha,’ a new Netflix documentary, revisits the lifestyle mogul’s court case and 2004 incarceration.
TV & Movies
The lifestyle mogul feels she was used as a “trophy” in her stock scandal.
Twenty years ago, Martha Stewart went to prison. But why, exactly? Martha, a new Netflix documentary, revisits the lifestyle mogul’s prolific career and the trial that forced her to change course.
What Stewart did to receive a five-month prison sentence has sometimes been referred to as insider trading. However, as viewers see in the doc (which premiered on Oct. 30), she was found guilty of something else altogether.
In Martha, the titular entrepreneur discusses being on vacation in 2001 and getting a message from her stockbroker, Peter Bacanovic, about her stock in the biotech firm ImClone.
“It was a very short conversation, saying, ‘The stock’s going down, I think you should sell,’” Stewart said. “And I said ‘Good, sell.’”
Later, in 2003, Stewart and Bacanovic would be charged with illegal insider trading (or securities fraud).
